Kamal Ahmad Ansari, a 50-year-old Muslim man from Bihar’s Madhubani and a convict in the 2006 Mumbai train bombings case, died of COVID-19 in the Government Medical College and Hospital in Nagpur on Monday.
Ansari was sentenced to death by a special court in September 2015. He had appealed against the verdict to the Bombay High Court through the legal aid by Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, stating that he had been falsely implicated in the terror case.
According to Advocate Shahid Ansari, Ansari’s lawyer, “He was on a ventilator for past few days and his health condition was not good as he was infected with the coronavirus. After his admission in hospital he was declared dead by doctors on Monday afternoon”, Hindustan Times quoted him as saying.
The father of five, Ansari was Ansari had talked to his family on 2 April and Ansari was doing fine. On 9 April, his mother received a call from the jail authorities informing her that her son has been admitted to a hospital due to COVID-19. She reached the hospital in Nagpur on 17 April and was allowed to see her son from a distance, Maktoob reported.
His bother, Jamal, said the family was informed of my brother’s death around 9.30 am on Monday.
Ansari was accused of planting one of the bombs which exploded at Matunga railway station in 2006, which killed 28 people and injured 122 others.
In a written statement given to the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (Moca) Court, Ansari had submitted that the Mumbai-based ATS (Anti Terrorism Squad) had implicated him in a fake terror case.
He had further stated that “Having employed 3rd-degree torture, ATS policemen began to tempt me saying, “You must be ready for this false charge and we will give you a lot of money.” They told me that they will give me about four lakhs if I agree to be an official witness. But, when I rejected this offer, ATS tried to tempt my co-accused to be given money and flats while the ATS Chief, P Raghuvanshi even threatened to implicate our family members in the same charge. The same threat continues on their part, the complaint of which has been logged (in the court) by accused number 2 and 6, Dr Tanveer and Muhammad Ali respectively.”
“I haven’t given any (confession) statement in this regard. I was forced to sign the blank papers having inflicted 3rd-degree torture upon me and a video of me was also shot in which I was compelled to utter and get recorded the script I was given to read that is totally fake. The fact is that I haven’t yet gone through the T.I.P. round. On the other hand, I was taken out (of Indah-barrack under the title of TIP) at 1:30 and was again locked in Indo-barrack at 1:50,” reads his statement.
Innocence Network, a legal aid group by human rights defenders, also endorsed that Ansari was falsely implicated in the case.
“According to ATS, on the day of bomb blast Ansari was in Mumbai and he had himself placed a black bag containing a bomb in a local train which caused a bomb blast in Matunga. Kamal was not in Mumbai on 11/07/06, rather he was in Madhubani and on the same day he had gone to Nepal Border. To substantiate the same fact, Kamal came up with two important pieces of evidence as (1) CDR of his mobile (2) Papers of Nepal Border,” it says.
“Surely, these days, magistrates are to be sold off and it’s easier to bargain for them. You can easily buy all the judges of the court from lower to the upper grade if you own money and power,” concluded Innocence Network India in the statement.
